CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Eva: “I’ve literally been kidnapped.”
Donovan: “Your kidnapper can’t be very good if you still have your phone.”
Eva: “Excuse me, sheriff. Your girlfriend was just dragged off the sidewalk in the middle of town by four whackjobs and you don’t sound very concerned!”
Donovan: “Your sheriff boyfriend is busy trying to shoo an entire flock of fucking Canadian geese off Mervin Lauter’s front porch that some asshole coated with peanut butter and bird seed. Where are your kidnappers taking you?”
Eva: “Book Club???”
Donovan: “Just got bit by one of these fuckers. If I don’t die an Alfred Hitchcockian death by goose I’ll swing by and pick you up when it lets out.”
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The minivan picked Bobby up in front of Peace of Pizza and then headed a few blocks west. The women around her chattered on about anything and everything while Eva wondered how she’d ended up in a town where kidnapping was acceptable.
They pulled up in front of a large brick home. Cars lined the street, and it looked as though every light in the home was blazing. They poured out of the minivan like a clown act.
“Welcome to my home,” Mrs. Nordemann said grandly, toddling up the walkway.
It didn’t really look like the sort of place neighbors were murdered. The architecture of the home was quite traditional, but the personal touches pushed it into Blue Moon territory. A pair of turquoise papasans with cherry red cushions hung suspended from the porch rafters behind stately columns. A fountain with a very enthusiastic naked couple wrapped around each other burbled in the front yard.
“Is the water coming from his—” Eva pointed.
Bobby glanced at the statue. “Yep. That’s his penis.”
They mounted the steps, and Eva spied an infinite row of shoes neatly lining the porch. Mrs. Nordemann pushed the door open. Laughter, music, and the smells of potluck beckoned them inside.
A collective squeal went up when Eva stepped barefoot across the threshold.
“The guest of honor has arrived,” Mrs. Nordemann announced as her guests flocked into the foyer. “Now, let’s give her some breathing room. Enid, would you mind getting Eva—or should I say Ava—a glass of wine?”
A rickety woman who had to be knocking on ninety shoved her way through the crowd of oglers.
“Red or white, Eva?” Mrs. Nordemann asked briskly.
“Uh, red?”
“Red, Enid,” Mrs. Nordemann shouted after the woman. “Come on in. We’re set up in the parlor,” she said, ushering Eva through the grand opening of the front room. It was jammed full of tables, chairs, sofas, and ottomans. Women’s purses and dog-earred stacks of Eva’s book Strings of Destiny rested on every flat surface. Thankfully, given the number of bodies in the room pumping off body heat, the hearth was empty. Even still, it felt like it was eighty degrees in the room.
“She looks flushed,” Eden, in leather leggings and a long blood red shirt announced. “Someone fan her.”
A dozen hands holding everything from magazines to napkins flashed in front of her face.
“Um, Eden? Ellery? Could I see you two alone for a moment?” Eva asked, staring daggers at her friends.
“Sure!” Ellery led the way through the throng and up the grand staircase to the second floor. She pushed open a nine-foot door that creaked like a haunted house. “This is Jillian’s private sitting room.”
It was done up in so many pink prints that Eva felt a little dizzy.
“What the hell am I doing here?”
Eden and Ellery shared a glance. “It’s Book Club.”
“I gathered that from the kidnapping van. Why was I snatched off the street and brought here against my will?”
Eden shot Ellery a look. “I thought you were going to send her the invitation?”
“I’m a bride-to-be! I’m juggling eight thousand details. I thought you were going to send her the invitation.”
“Oops,” Eden sighed. “Must have got our wires crossed. I blame Uranus.”
“So, this was not a kidnapping?”
The women shook their heads. “You’re the guest of honor at this month’s Book Club. We read your book, and now we want to pick your brain about it. Plus, we thought it would cheer you up after that whole your mom stealing your stuff thing,” Ellery announced.
“Do you often accidentally kidnap authors?” Eva asked rubbing her eyes.
“No, of course not!” Ellery said, taking offense.
“Well, there was that one time with—”
“Ixnay on the napkidding-ay,” Ellery hissed, making a slashing motion across her throat.
“So, I’m free to leave?” Eva asked. “You’re not holding me hostage?”
“Of course, you’re free to leave,” Eden promised.
“I mean, that would totally devastate your die-hard fans downstairs. Probably damage your readership a bit. Mrs. Nordemann runs a book blog with like fifty-thousand followers. She’s like a small-town Oprah. So I wouldn’t piss her off if I were you. But you can leave at any time,” Ellery said with a diabolical grin.
Eva sighed. “Let’s go find my wine.”
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Book Club in Blue Moon was an experience. It had the festive feeling of a book signing with the alcohol equivalent of a commercial bar.
They guided Eva to a tufted ottoman in front of the marble fireplace. Her wine glass was magically refilled as the crowd settled itself into the room.
“Attention. Attention.” Mrs. Nordemann clapped her hands like a school teacher.
When the chatter failed to die down, Ellery stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Hey!”
Everyone quieted down.
“Thank you, Ellery,” Mrs. Nordemann said. “First I would like to thank you all for being here. I know we’re very excited to have tonight’s guest author with us. The refreshments for this evening are all available in the formal dining room, and the wine has been generously discounted by Davis Gates at Blue Moon Winery.”
Eva spotted Eden off to the side. The woman glared at the wineglass in her hand and put it down on the writing desk next to her and stomped out of the room. She returned a moment later with a beer. Ellery caught Eva’s eye and nodded in Eden’s direction in a telegraphed See? I told you so.
“Now, on to the exciting part of the evening. I’d like you all to welcome our very own Eva Merill who writes under the pen name Ava Franklin. A secret I’m sure that we’re all more than happy to keep,” she said, giving the audience a steely-eyed look. With no dissenters she smiled sweetly. “Eva is the author of five novels, including my personal favorite Fated Fools, which we will be discussing tonight.”
There were finger snaps instead of applause, and Eva wondered if it was because most of the audience was busy clutching wine glasses.
“Now without further ado, Eva will read a selection from Strings of Destiny.”
“I will?” she asked over the finger snapping.
Mrs. Nordemann handed her a paperback with a book mark. “Just the highlighted portion, dear.”
She sat on her pink and ivory tufted ottoman and read aloud from an incredibly sexy passage that the group had voted on. She’d never read her own work in front of an audience before.
Sure, during the writing process she’d muttered dialogue out loud, trying out the words, the inflections. But it was a whole different experience to say “rigid length of cock” out loud. Especially when a good portion of the audience was old enough to be her grandparents.
The accolades went straight to her head as did the seemingly bottomless wine. The Blue Moon Book Club was a well-read group. While they preferred romance or erotica, they also dabbled in thrillers, cozy mysteries, and women’s fiction. It was refreshing to see a handful of men jumping into the discussion on character motivations and theories on after the epilogue.
This was her first sort-of public event as a writer, and Blue Moon was kind enough to walk her through it while feeding her heart-shaped appetizers. They were as enthusiastic about her stories, her characters, as she was. It was a heady thing to have kept something under wraps for so long only to unveil it to the world and be accepted.
It was the most enjoyable kidnapping Eva had ever experienced. Also the only one. But still.
She answered questions, both the insightful and the ridiculous.
“Who is your favorite hero?”
“What do you read for fun?”
“Do you ever base characters on people you know in real life?”
“How do you research your sex scenes?” That one was asked by the very serious, very interested Mrs. Nordemann.
“What are you working on next?” Eden asked from the back of the room where she was crowded around a table between Fitz and Julia from the juice shop.
“I’m actually working on a small-town series inspired by Blue Moon,” Eva told them.
The crowd chatter got louder and more excited. Mrs. Nordemann fanned herself with a napkin. “I can only assume that our sheriff will play a starring role?”
“He was definitely an inspiration for the main character,” Eva admitted. The chatter increased to deafening levels. Titters of laughter erupted.
Oh, hell. Had she just admitted that Blue Moon would have a front row seat to the fictional version of her sex life with Donovan?
“I believe we have time for a few more questions, and then perhaps we could talk Eva into signing just a few books while she’s here,” Mrs. Nordemann announced.
A hand raised from behind the yellow and purple settee. Eva couldn’t see the woman’s face.
“Uh, yes. You in the pink?”
“Just how well-endowed would you say Sheriff Cardona is?”
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Donovan double parked in front of Mrs. Nordemann’s house. Book Club was breaking up and, as usual, had apparently involved a lot of wine. He could tell by the Mooners pouring out of the house. Some of them were stumbling after their designated drivers. He sighed and got out of the car.
Book Club invariably ended in hordes of drunken women, and a handful of men, clogging Mrs. Nordemann’s street. There weren’t any neighbors left to annoy of course. They were all part of the Book Club. But he still liked to check in every month to make sure everyone got home safely.
“Ladies,” he said, greeting the first group of women. They eyed him up starting at the crotch and giggled. He sighed.
It was an odd collection of people, an exact representation of Blue Moon. Nan, the brewery’s line cook, was still wearing her John Pierce Brews work shirt, her dark hair hung over her shoulders in braids. She had an arm around Moon Beam Parker, the man-eating good time girl of Blue Moon. Moon Beam had snatched up Beckett Pierce’s virginity at sixteen and was currently shopping for husband number three. Willa trailed them in her hot pink cowboy boots, giving Ellery wide berth. She tried to hide the plastic cup full of God knows what under her poncho when she spotted him.
“Evening, Sheriff,” she said with a cheerful wave.
“Evening, Willa. What’s in the cup?”
“Just some iced tea for the road,” she said innocently.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Willa. It’s that I’d hate to pull you and your friends over and find an open container in your car.” He twirled his keys around his finger.
She sighed. “Ugh. Fine!”
“You don’t have to dump it,” he told her with a grin.
“Chug it!” Enid Macklemore, Blue Moon’s oldest working dog walker, shouted in her thin old lady voice. She looked like a slight breeze could knock her on her ass, but he’d seen her wrestle dogs the size of Summer’s Valentina to the ground if they had the bad manners to ignore her commands.
Willa shot Donovan a coy look.
He rolled his eyes, hands on hips. “Go on. You might as well.”
The growing crowd around them cheered as Willa knocked back eighteen ounces of definitely not iced tea. She finished with victory arms and spiked the empty cup on the sidewalk and, with a distinct sway in her step, jogged in a circle high-fiving everyone before picking up the discarded cup again. No one in Blue Moon would ever dare to purposely litter.
“Who’s Willa’s DD?” Donovan asked the crowd.
“That’d be me,” Rob, Julia’s husband, ambled up the sidewalk. “I’m taking five of these drunken hippies home.” He pointed at the Volkswagen bus behind him.
“Where did you get that thing?” Donovan asked. It was covered in glossy rainbow paint. The interior lights were on, and Donovan could see purple fur covering the interior.
“Ernest Washington loans it out every Book Club. Free advertising for his car lot.”
“The Shaggin’ Wagon’s here!” Julia, several glasses of wine to the wind, announced before planting a sloppy kiss on Rob’s chin. “I was aiming for your mouth,” she snickered.
“Yes, you were,” Rob said affectionately. “Okay, ladies, let’s load up. Your sports drinks, aspirin, and greasy veggie burgers are waiting for you in the cup and burger holders.”
“You are like the best husband I’ve ever married,” Julia said, batting her baby blues up at him.
“I’m also the only husband you’ve ever married,” he reminded her, giving her a nudge toward the front seat.
“I have such good taste!”
Donovan hid his laugh as Rob proceeded to load four inebriated ladies and one Fitz into the van. They pulled away from the curb, arms waving out of windows. He could hear the giggling even as the van turned the corner.
He turned back to the crowd that was slowly dispersing.
Ellery danced over to him in her Frankenstein boots. “Just so you know. Your girlfriend is amazing.” Her thick black eyeliner was smeared into one eyebrow and she had black lipstick on her teeth.
“I am well aware, El,” he grinned.
“She’s like a legit author, and her characters are so real. I mean, all that stuff lives in her head, and it’s like… wow!”
“Who’s taking you home?” he asked her.
“My Masey just texted and said he was coming to carry me home. I told him to bring the wheelbarrow because I might fall down,” she said, shoving her phone in his face. “See?”
Donovan squinted at the screen that was two inches from his face and burning holes in his retinas. “Actually, you told him to bring your weed whacker because you might have clowns.”
Ellery frowned. “Stupid autocorrect.” She beamed again when she spotted Mason with a weed whacker slung over his shoulder. She sighed the sigh of a woman head over heels in love. “Do you see how great he is? He listens to everything I say. Even the stupid things!”
She skipped over to her fiancé and laid a kiss on him that was NC-17 at a minimum.
Before Donovan could suggest they take it somewhere else, preferably home, Eva appeared on the porch. Her hair was a wild auburn under the soft glow of the lights. Eyes bright, she grinned at him, and if there had been any questions before about being in love, the hot fist to his gut left no doubt. She was beautiful, she was glowing, and she was his.
Eva jogged down the path, arms open wide for him. She tripped over her own feet. He caught her before she face-planted on the sidewalk.
“Careful there,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face.
“Donovan! It was amazing! I said ‘cock’ repeatedly in front of everyone, and no one called me a perv. I signed a whole bunch of books. And my wineglass was never empty.” She hazarded a glance around before whispering, “It was magical.”
“It sounds like your first kidnapping was a positive experience,” he teased.
“They treated me like a real writer,” she said, eyes shining.
“Baby, you are a real writer.”
“You’re my crazy boyfriend. You’re supposed to say that. Oh!” Her eyes widened. “I almost forgot, I think everyone knows just what kind of weapon you’re packing if you know what I mean.” She patted him in the crotch and attempted to wink.
“Christ, Eva!” Donovan cringed.
“I didn’t mean to tell them. And I didn’t get really specific, but it’s kinda hard not to brag. I mean, you’re huge.”
Donovan clamped a hand over her mouth. “You are trouble with a capital T, Evangelina.”
“And I’m alllllll yours,” she said, spreading her arms wide.
The remaining Book Clubbers broke into spontaneous finger snaps around them.
“Eva, just a moment please.” Mrs. Nordemann trotted down the walk to them. She was dressed in her traditional black garb. Though, in a nod to the festivity of the occasion, her ankle-length black skirt had a smattering of rhinestones around the hem.
“Thank you again for inviting me tonight,” Eva gushed.
“Inviting. Kidnapping. Basically the same thing in Blue Moon,” Donovan said under his breath.
“Thank you for joining us. It was a real treat. I just wanted you to know how very proud I am of you,” Mrs. Nordemann said, patting Eva’s arm. “You’re a very talented young woman and so dedicated to your craft. I hope you know how much we all truly enjoy your work. And I hope you can take a moment to step back and really appreciate what you’ve built.”
Eva’s hazel eyes glittered with what looked like tears. Yep. That was a tear that just slid down Eva’s cheek. Awh, hell.
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me,” Eva sniffled. She wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“My dear, just because you haven’t heard the words from someone important doesn’t make them less true. I’m, of course, speaking of your mother who, one can only assume, is a real piece of shit.”
Donovan swiped a hand over his face. Mrs. Nordemann was throwing around swear words in her front yard. Fucking Uranus.
“Eva, I just hope you know how proud we all are of you. And maybe think about naming a character after me.” With a wiggle of her fingers, Mrs. Nordemann scurried back up onto her porch. “Enid, let’s open the tequila! I feel like celebrating.”
Donovan slid an arm around Eva’s waist and half carried, half dragged, her to his car.
“Come on, Ava Franklin. Let’s get you home to bed.”